Developing an Augmented Reality Tourism App through User-Centred Design (Extended Version)

TL;DR

This paper presents the development of an augmented reality tourism app using user-centred design, emphasizing usability, iterative development, and user feedback to improve the AR experience for tourists.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive user-centred design process for creating an AR tourism app, including domain analysis, iterative development, and evaluation with real users.

Findings

Users find the system usable and intuitive

Iterative design improves app usability

Users suggest further customization options

Abstract

Augmented Reality (AR) bridges the gap between the physical and virtual world. Through overlaying graphics on natural environments, users can immerse themselves in a tailored environment. This offers great benefits to mobile tourism, where points of interest (POIs) can be annotated on a smartphone screen. While a variety of apps currently exist, usability issues can discourage users from embracing AR. Interfaces can become cluttered with icons, with POI occlusion posing further challenges. In this paper, we use user-centred design (UCD) to develop an AR tourism app. We solicit requirements through a synthesis of domain analysis, tourist observation and semi-structured interviews. Whereas previous user-centred work has designed mock-ups, we iteratively develop a full Android app. This includes overhead maps and route navigation, in addition to a detailed AR browser. The final product is evaluated by 20 users, who participate in a tourism task in a UK city. Users regard the system as usable and intuitive, and suggest the addition of further customisation. We finish by critically analysing the challenges of a user-centred methodology.